I have always enjoyed reading Michael Lewis, author of "Liar's Poker" but have always considered him to be something of a lightweight. His positive, good-natured spin on his subjects, his cheery tone, his breezy and humorous writing style was fun, but a trifle superficial.
The collapse of the business and culture of investment banking, and the pain that collapse has wrought onto the rest of the economy, seems to have lit some sort of fire in Mikey. Though never veering into anything like righteous indignation, he does come across as more serious --- not to mention peeved --- than I've ever read him.
The first shot of this more serious, concerned Lewis was fired in the pages of Portfolio, a Conde Nast publication that was launched to be a kind of New Gilded Age wank-mag but looks to be turning into its autopsy report. It's a great, comprehensible overview of the chicanery, shenanigans, subterfuges, and magic thinking that created our current financial system collapse. As well as a thumbnail sketch of the culture that created a welcoming environment for it all.
The second shot, popped off in the NYT Opinion pages adds a look at the governmental and institutional (especially the financial ratings institutions) capture by the investment banking culture.
Both are rewarding and enlightening reads.
Showing posts with label financial collapse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial collapse. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Eliot Spitzer: Columnist
Disgraced former NY District Attorney and Governor Eliot Spitzer has published his first column for Slate, in which he astutely criticizes the form that the taxpayer-funded bailout has taken. Whatever you may think of Spitzer, it's clear that the man recognizes a good fucking when he sees one.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
If Not Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse When?
As of end of day Friday, the fbomber has heard 24 hours of a panicked chorus of dire, if vague, warnings about what kind of catastrophe awaits our global economic system if the American taxpayer does not pick up the tab for the bad home loan-based debt that appears to be the financial equivalent of the Ebola virus.
Against this frantic, unified squealing, the fbomber would like to send up a countervailing, solitary and equally frantic squeal of his own: "Don't do it!"
Don't allocate money for a bailout. Don't save these financial institutions. Don't prop up the rotten timbers of the global finance structure.
Let it all collapse.
The fbomber does not say this out of a disbelief of the worst case scenarios which have been trotted out for the last news cycle. He says it in a fervent hope and belief that the worst case scenarios are actually conservative, rosy-tinted, dream-wishes compared to the full extent of the inevitable disaster.
In short, the fbomber wishes for a complete descent into violent, senseless anarchy. Pronto.
He can't help it. As a product of the 80's, he was raised on a steady stream of post-apocalyptic narratives in his formative years. As it turned out, movies like Mad Max, Red Dawn, and The Terminator shaped his psychology in a profound way.
He's actually disappointed that it's 2008 and he has not yet once had to wear animal furs to survive, eat human flesh or drive a spike-studded dune buggy across the desert while being chased by a psychotic midget.
That is the violent, chaotic, brutal reality that his upbringing prepared him for --- not this boring business of going to work every day to do the same stupid job. Where's the glamor to that? The adrenaline rush? The opportunity to callously commit satisfyingly vicious acts of violence without fear of retribution? Unless you're working for the LAPD, nowhere.
The fbomber actually looks forward to a life of scrabbling for life's essentials amid the ruins of a once-functioning society.
After all, such a life looks to combine the most enjoyable aspects of camping, hunting, road-racing, mixed martial arts, scavenger hunts and trading food-scraps for sexual favors.
He has exciting plans to create his own society, a tribe which rewards indolence and cynicism with the same respect that our existing society heaps upon industry and competence.
Most of all, he eagerly anticipates being able to travel the 405 during daylight hours at a speed exceeding 5 miles per hour.
So, yeah. Fuck this "New Great Depression" talk. Let's think big here, folks, along the lines of "Next Dark Age" or better yet, "Pre-History 2.0." If he's not wearing a feral-cat loincloth and club-fighting another dude for chieftan status by next week, at the latest, he's going to be pissed.
Against this frantic, unified squealing, the fbomber would like to send up a countervailing, solitary and equally frantic squeal of his own: "Don't do it!"
Don't allocate money for a bailout. Don't save these financial institutions. Don't prop up the rotten timbers of the global finance structure.
Let it all collapse.
The fbomber does not say this out of a disbelief of the worst case scenarios which have been trotted out for the last news cycle. He says it in a fervent hope and belief that the worst case scenarios are actually conservative, rosy-tinted, dream-wishes compared to the full extent of the inevitable disaster.
In short, the fbomber wishes for a complete descent into violent, senseless anarchy. Pronto.
He can't help it. As a product of the 80's, he was raised on a steady stream of post-apocalyptic narratives in his formative years. As it turned out, movies like Mad Max, Red Dawn, and The Terminator shaped his psychology in a profound way.
He's actually disappointed that it's 2008 and he has not yet once had to wear animal furs to survive, eat human flesh or drive a spike-studded dune buggy across the desert while being chased by a psychotic midget.
That is the violent, chaotic, brutal reality that his upbringing prepared him for --- not this boring business of going to work every day to do the same stupid job. Where's the glamor to that? The adrenaline rush? The opportunity to callously commit satisfyingly vicious acts of violence without fear of retribution? Unless you're working for the LAPD, nowhere.
The fbomber actually looks forward to a life of scrabbling for life's essentials amid the ruins of a once-functioning society.
After all, such a life looks to combine the most enjoyable aspects of camping, hunting, road-racing, mixed martial arts, scavenger hunts and trading food-scraps for sexual favors.
He has exciting plans to create his own society, a tribe which rewards indolence and cynicism with the same respect that our existing society heaps upon industry and competence.
Most of all, he eagerly anticipates being able to travel the 405 during daylight hours at a speed exceeding 5 miles per hour.
So, yeah. Fuck this "New Great Depression" talk. Let's think big here, folks, along the lines of "Next Dark Age" or better yet, "Pre-History 2.0." If he's not wearing a feral-cat loincloth and club-fighting another dude for chieftan status by next week, at the latest, he's going to be pissed.
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